Steiner Waldorf Education in transition : critical narratives towards renewal

Abstract

Steiner Waldorf Education (SWE) is undergoing a significant transition in its one hundredth year of existence. At a time when its influence across the globe is unparalleled, challenges are emerging that threaten to disrupt the traditional and stable model of SWE. There is also a heightening of concern that the gift of SWE may be corrupted. At the same time, there is a growing sense of criticality and reflexivity animating research and thinking about SWE and its global future. The intent of this critical study is to tease out from a hermeneutic engagement with teachers' lived experiences, areas of dysfunction in Steiner Waldorf (SW) praxis, as well as to offer new narratives that might contribute to the renewal of SWE in the 21st century. The study is framed as a heuristic-narrative inquiry into SWE in a time of transition. The Parzival question (what ails you?) is summoned to draw from teachers' lived experiences of working and living in SWE, problematic narratives and disruptive practices that underscore some of the commonly perceived though marginally articulated issues, confronting SWE. The study emerges from the researcher's own critical and appreciative experiences in various Steiner organisations, across a number of portfolios, focussing on 17 years teaching from early childhood to secondary education, as well as managing a high school. Fundamental to the study are fifteen dialogic conversations with former and current SW educators working in Australian schools. These dialogues contribute towards delineating key fault lines that reveal powerful tensions within the fabric of SWE and particularly the enigmatic and contested relationship between educational praxis and its anthroposophical theoretical foundations. A number of themes are distilled from the qualitative interviews, including anthroposophy, leadership, professional culture and learning, the learning culture and curriculum, emotionality, isolation and spiritual superiority. Two ubiquitous leitmotivs are chosen to further explore and interconnect these thematic links. The hermeneutic-phenomenological reading of teachers' described experiences is distilled to identify and promote innovative approaches and resistant questions that challenge the status quo of Steiner Waldorf praxis. The final chapters propose positive and individual narratives that may help to link more fully with the strong instinctive powers that undergird SWE and inspire teachers to stake their creative imaginations on idiosyncratic readings of Steiner and deeply etched images of their personal callings as Steiner teachers.

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English